


bricks

by ironcouer



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, happy endings, nyc au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 13:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironcouer/pseuds/ironcouer
Summary: three times minghao and mingyu drink together, one time they're apart, and one time they figure it out.





	bricks

I.

Minghao slurs “make me a masterpiece,” and Mingyu giggles and kisses his cheek. Everyone has since gone to bed, and they sit at the living room with one lamp on and scattered bottles of soju and beer on the table. 

“I didn’t ask for that,” whines Minghao, curling his legs inward to his chest, meanwhile Mingyu spreads outward, takes up more room, asking to be let in to Minghao’s space. Mingyu and Minghao are opposites pressed against each other, fitting perfectly. 

“My kisses are masterpieces, you’re lucky.” Mingyu giggles and takes a large gulp of his wine, then coughs as it fizzes down his throat. It shouldn’t be endearing, but it is. 

Minghao could say it. It would be so easy to say _you’re right_ and he almost does but it’s so cheesy and he’s losing rapid control of his faculties and it’s Mingyu and it’s the wine but isn’t it always? Isn’t it always something rather than the point of it all, looking just off center, looking past the corner of your eye, to the thing that you know is there, but your mind refuses to see it?

Minghao says, go to bed, and trips over his slippers on his way to his bedroom door. There’s his wall, to keep Mingyu out, to keep himself in. 

Mingyu falls asleep at the table, and Minghao doesn’t fall asleep for another hour. 

 

II. 

After they all moved to New York City for internships and jobs (Mingyu, Minghao, Jihoon, and Junhui together—a comfort) they decided to rent a two bedroom together in the Heights. They’ve all since moved on to better jobs and no one really had to live together anymore. Mingyu and Minghao working as freelance photographers, Junhui a restaurant consultant, and Jihoon a producer. No one had to share apartments, but for some reason Mingyu and Minghao spread out and held down the fort, year after year too comfortable to move. 

A life with Mingyu was a worn-in life, comfortable and clean and neat and relaxing. They have their routines: scheduling gigs on their shared calendars, grocery runs to less crowded grocery stores outside the city on the weekends, scouting locations, getting drunk, and never crossing the line. 

“Boundaries are good,” he’d always say, hoping Mingyu knew he meant this more for himself. Getting drunk was always hard, because then that boundary, his beloved boundary, started to shake and weave and he couldn’t find it so clearly anymore. _Keep up the wall, keep up the bricks. Don’t let it fall._

Getting drunk is also hard because Mingyu can’t hold his fucking liquor. 

Mingyu is slack against the floor, moaning “I’m never drinking again, Minghao it’s all your fault,” and Minghao really should hide the grin on his face, except that he refuses to. 

“I told you not to mix alcohol, your stomach gets all messed up when you mix liquor and wine. You’re messing with the sanctity of the wine.”

Mingyu blows airs through his lips, heavy and plump and Minghao refuses to be attracted to a man when he’s hugging a toilet bowl. “Schmanctity. I feel gross.”

Minghao slides down to the floor and hugs his knees. “You look gross.”

Mingyu laughs, and then covers his mouth to dry heave. “Thanks for the validation.”

Minghao wets a cloth towel and presses it against his face, the red flush receding, and then rising back up. He notes the curve and flow of Mingyu’s cheeks, his smile still curving up even when he’s in pain, his eyelashes long and slick, lips plump from pressing them together in sick moans, and Minghao presses the cloth to Mingyu’s neck, and he falls against him, murmuring “don’t move,” and Minghao moves him to the side and opens the bathroom door with a shaking hand. 

He comes back with a water bottle, and Mingyu passed out on the bathroom floor. 

Mingyu wakes in his bed with a full water bottle and covers against him and assumes he got up some time during the night and got himself to bed, though he doesn’t remember how.

 

III. 

Minghao is under the covers with Mingyu, and there’s nothing much weird about this except Minghao is exceptionally drunk and he knows his faculties are down but he’s too wine drunk to care. Mingyu isn’t nearly as drunk as he should be. 

Minghao is holding Mingyu’s hand while he’s humming under the covers and he’s thinking _I can draw the line here. I can stop. I can be okay with this._

His leg is touching his best friend’s, they’re getting close and while it feels good there’s a nagging worry, and that’s when he thinks, _I can stop. I can be okay with this._

Mingyu’s hand comes up to cradle his face, and it feels too good for him to recoil. _I can stop._

Minghao’s lips are already touching Mingyu’s when, belatedly, he says, “I can’t stop.” The wall, very carefully, beautifully built, crumbles, and Mingyu languidly giggles into his words and kisses him back. He’s gone, but not quite, and his voice lilts with a murmur of some words Minghao can’t hear. 

Mingyu nods and lays his hand against Minghao’s shoulder, drawing him closer, and it’s wrong because it was never supposed to be like this, it was supposed to happen sober and happy and well-lit, with very well pronounced, well intentioned words between kisses, but instead Minghao burrows into Mingyu’s broadness, finding momentary comfort in Mingyu wrapped around him, and then it, and he, is gone when he wakes up. 

 

IV. 

His phone rings again, and Minghao lets it go to voicemail. 

“You’re going to have to talk to him eventually. You live with him.” Minghao calls Junhui when he has an issue he can’t seem to bite around, and usually it just helps him not to feel so alone, and Junhui helps him by just being there, in the silence or in loudness, and it’s a comfort. It’s not so comforting now, as it is damning. 

“Yeah, but the more I put it off, the worse I’ll feel, and you know that aggressive self-loathing is my sweet spot.”

Junhui scoffs, and Minghao hates how pretentious it feels, like he knows something the rest of people don’t. 

“You’re going to look back on this and say, “I was such an idiot, why didn’t I just see it.”

“You’re wrong.” There’s no preamble, no other words, he’s just wrong, it’s in his gut, and he knows Mingyu, and he knows himself, and he knows them. He’s been deep inside for years, he knows the look on Mingyu’s face when he has a new crush, when a new boy or girl catches his eye, and there’s no overlap. How could there be? They’d been best friends since high school. Minghao nursed his situation over years of refusing to admit anything. If he had sensed anything, a slight something from Mingyu, maybe things would be different. But it was always empty, hollow, and an echo back to Minghao’s ears, bouncing off walls. 

Junhui laughs. “You’re such a bad liar, Jesus. I want to slap you so bad.” 

Minghao feels red rising up in his cheeks, and takes another bite of chicken. “It’s not—it’s just, it’s him, he loves everyone, it’s not…. a thing. I handle it. I’ve got it.”

“Is carrying him to his bed handling it? Is kissing him under his covers handling it? Last time I checked, praying he doesn’t remember isn’t handling it.”

Minghao takes the words from the air and tastes, vinegar and bitter inside his cheeks, behind his teeth, like forgetting to brush. A bad habit, realized. 

 

V. 

Minghao goes home. He knows Mingyu will be home because it’s on their damn shared calendar, and if he didn’t realize how disgustingly domestic they were, he realized it when Mingyu put “Minghao won’t come home” and 8 PM on Friday night and a “Had to go to smorgasbord by myself” on Saturday afternoon. 

“Minghao,” Mingyu calls out, almost a question, almost not, and Mingyu feels a pang of guilt radiate. “It’s me,” he says, and turns to see Mingyu crying.

“Why are you crying,” Minghao says, but it’s a statement, and he wants to hold back his bullshit attempts at wall building, but there it goes, up, up, up.

Mingyu cocks his head and his glassy eyes fog over again, and he begins, starts to say, “Because you were, and then I got up, and then gone…never mind.”

Brick by brick by brick, further up and up and up. 

Mingyu grabs a bag and heads to the door. “When you want to kiss me and not hate yourself for it, let me know, okay?”

 

VI. 

“Junhui texted me.” Minghao says, and it’s a bad way to say I’m story, but it’s a start. 

Mingyu looks up at him, then over to Junhui, who rushes out of the kitchen, dragging Jihoon into his room. Minghao hoists himself on to the counter, and Mingyu looks at his feet. 

“I wanted to say I’m sorry, and also I want you to come home.”

“Oh, I’ve been home, just not when you’re there.” It’s meant to sting and it does, but he soldiers on. 

“I want you home when I’m home, then. I miss you and I didn’t want to ruin anything, but I guess I ruined everything by proxy.”

Mingyu glances up, and Minghao notices he’s not crying.

“Minghao, I’m mad at you because all you try to do is keep me out when all I want is to be let in.”

“But you left, you— “

Mingyu laughs bitterly. “I had work! Remember? Both of us have these things called jobs? And then I rushed home, fucking giddy, and you’re not home, no note, nothing on the calendar, fine. So, I waited and I was so excited because finally, you’d kissed me, and— “ 

“Finally?”

“Don’t interrupt me.”

 _Finally._ It’s a loose brick. 

“Anyways, so I am so excited and then it gets later and later and I wanted to go out for drinks to celebrate and then you don’t come home, you ignore my calls, when all I wanted to say was that—thank you for kissing me.”

Minghao’s eyes widen. “Thank you? I kiss you and you say thank you?”

Mingyu’s face scrunches up and he shakes his head, “I—it sounded a lot more romantic in my head.”

Now a whole section of the wall is loose, and feelings are going to start worming into Minghao’s heart, and he’s so weak, days without Mingyu, that he’ll let them. 

Minghao laughs. “I’m sorry I ran away. Friends?”

Mingyu barks a laugh, and Minghao has never heard a person not in a movie bark a laugh before.

“What? Are you—listening to me? I don’t want to be your friend, I mean, I do in a way like my boyfriend is my best friend but only in that way not in the way like oh yeah this is my friend and by friends, I mean the classic heterosexual definition where nothing ever— “

And for the second time, with a wall demolished, Minghao hops off the kitchen counter to give Mingyu more of himself in the form of a kiss, with his hand grasping at Mingyu’s t-shirt and begging that his brain won’t short circuit thinking about Mingyu and boyfriend without a negative in the middle of those words. 

“Is it safe!” Jihoon calls from Junhui’s room, and Mingyu just laughs, intertwines his fingers with Minghao’s and kisses Minghao’s forehead. 

“If you say boyfriends, then that answer would be yes.”

Minghao kisses Mingyu’s forehead, and it is sweet. He kisses his boyfriend, and it is good and well. 

“Then, I say boyfriends.”

 

There is a comfort in the kisses they provide, something that is wholly sober and pure, that no one will regret and no one will want to forget. 

There is something in the way that Mingyu loves Minghao, with no holds, no barriers, no bricks, that makes Minghao feel secured. 

There is something in the way that Minghao loves Mingyu, is a safe, treasured style, that makes Mingyu feel as if he’s been found for who he truly is, that all along Minghao had known, he just lacked what he needed to show it. 

It is open, green fields for miles, a sweet breeze coming down cool them, kisses that taste sweet in their mouths, setting suns to set them aglow. They are, after all, with each other—and home, as always when they are together, is found.

**Author's Note:**

> WOW I HAVEN'T WRITTEN IN A LONG TIME!! i kind of fell away from svt for a while, but I am happy to be writing gyuhao again and loving these boys even more. thank u for reading and feel free to hop over to @sieeptalkings on twt for the gyuhao discourse. i'm super rusty @ this but thank u for reading ilu!!!


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